space shuttle

Maintaining NASA’s 4,900 facilities across the nation is something agency officials say they increasingly cannot afford. NASA’s Inspector General Paul Martin said the agency needs to improve how it identifies what facilities are being used and considering options to dispose of infrastructures if there are no future plans for the facility. Of its facilities, 33 have been identified […]
[Read More]

The space shuttle Discovery, atop a 747, flew low across the skies of Washington, D.C. today on its way to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, where it will retire. Texas lawmakers went outside to catch a glimpse of the final fight and some posted photos of the spectacle to Facebook at Twitter.
[Read More]

This week on “Political Cartoons of the Week,” we feature David Horsey’s take on the rapid decline in illegal immigration from Mexico and Nick Anderson’s fond farewell to the Space Shuttle. Those are among the best cartoons from the award-winning artists of Hearst Newspapers.
[Read More]

A group of former astronauts and other critics have blasted the agency and the Obama administration for ending the 30-year-old shuttle program, once the cornerstone of NASA. But NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told a National Press Club luncheon that the agency is merely starting a new chapter of space exploration _ not abandoning human space flight.

Speculation that Kelly, the husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., might run for Republican Sen. Jon Kyl’s seat or Giffords’ seat if she stepped down, arose when the four-shuttle commander announced last month he plans to retire from NASA and the Navy on Oct. 1.

With NASA’s last space shuttle flight to resupply the International Space due in a matter of weeks, Congress is taking a harder look at preparations by the commercial spacecraft industry to start ferrying cargo to the orbiting laboratory in the near future.

Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, and other members of Congress pressed representatives from NASA and two major commercial spacecraft companies for greater openness about progress and problems besetting the effort.

Six Republican lawmakers from Texas once again implored President Obama today to provide federal disaster assistance to Texas for fighting the wildfires that have raged over 2.2 million acres — about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. The GOP representatives chalked up Obama’s refusal to grant Gov. Rick Perry’s request to punishing the state for not voting for him.

Even though Obama has granted disaster declarations to several states that didn’t vote for him, such as North Dakota, Alabama and Mississippi, Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, said that’s because he is “going after the big boys.”